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While traffic increased in February for U.S. Airways Group, slower revenue growth put pressure on shares.

A slower pace of revenue growth per available seat mile could indicate the airline is having trouble raising prices to offset the rising cost of fuel.

[Editors Note: this quote is a clarification on U.S. Airways revenue:]

“Revenue per available seat mile, which measures how much an airline makes to fly one passenger a single mile, rose 7% in February compared with the same month last year. But that’s less than in previous months. The metric had increased by double-digit percentages since September,” writes the Associated Press.

U.S. Airways (LCC) stock was hovering near $7.02, down 61 cents, or 7.99%. Southwest Airlines (LUV) stock was off nearly 3% in early afternoon trading. Smaller carrier Hawaiian Holdings (HA) was off 5.6%. But shares of Spirit Airlines (SAVE) were up 2.65%.

In a press release, U.S. Airways said mainline revenue passenger miles for February were 4.3 billion, up 7.9% versus February 2011. Available seat miles, a measure of capacity, rose 5.8% to 5.5 billion.

As we pointed out in a previous post, the latest filings from David Tepper of Appaloosa Management showed he emptied his position in U.S. Airways in recent months.

David Tepper of Appaloosa Management appears to have reduced his equity portfolio considerably in the fourth quarter, according to a filing released after the close of trading on Tuesday. The value of Tepper’s stock holdings fell to $765 million from $1.5 billion at the end of the third quarter, according to the filing.

Over two quarters, the drop is even more pronounced; Tepper reported stakes worth $4.2 billion at the end of the second quarter. (Of course, options and other assets don’t show up in quarterly filing reports, so it’s unclear how much Tepper actually took off the table.)

Tepper’s entire 2.5 million-share stake in Citigroup (C), which he reported at the end of the third quarter, is gone in the new filing, as is his 4.3-million-share stake in AMR Group (AMR), his 2.9 million share stake in Delta (DAL) and his 9.3-million-share stake in US Airways (LCC). Tepper opened a new 1.2-million-share position in Oracle (ORCL).

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